New D
of
ECONOMIC OBSTACLES MAY HAVE
DEALT A BLOW TO THE AVAILABILITY
OF FINANCING, BUT THAT HASN’T
BEEN A MAJOR ROADBLOCK FOR
INVESTORS—AT LEAST, NOT YET
If the investment sales market performs poorly for the remainder of 2011, ana- lysts could certainly point to a host of
contributing factors—the European fiscal
crisis, the debt ceiling debacle and the
downgrade of US debt by Standard &
Poor’s, to name just a few. However, for the
most part investors in commercial real
estate have
shrugged off the
negative outside
influences and
have sought safe havens in key asset classes.
That is not to say, however, that the rancor on Capitol Hill had no effect on commercial real estate investment. Analysts tell
Real Estate Forum that while investors
didn’t hit the “stop” button in response to
the daily drama in DC and on Wall Street,
many did choose to hit “pause” for a period
of time. Now that the fourth quarter is
By John Jordan
upon us, the chief adversary for those
engaged in investment sales may be economic uncertainty, which has blunted the
positive momentum the capital markets
were experiencing earlier this year.
Dan Fasulo, managing director of New
York City-based Real Capital Analytics, says,
“2011 has been a recovery year. From the
beginning of the year to late spring/early
summer, which was when the turbulence
started, capital was much more prevalent
on the debt and equity side. We were seeing
massive 2007-type competition for assets in
the primary markets. The recovery we
started to see in the major markets like
Manhattan was slowly starting to spread
throughout the country.”
Mark Grinis, Americas transaction real
estate leader for Ernst & Young, relates that
the S&P downgrade of US debt was just one
of a host of weak economic indicators—
